Skylanders Trap Team characters, multiplayer uncovered at E3

Gallery: Skylanders Trap Team characters, multiplayer uncovered at E3

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Skylanders Trap Team is fully unwrapped at E3 with new Trap Master characters, details on multiplayer and how the new trapable villains work.

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The pressure is on this year for

Skylanders to respond to competition from Disney Infinity, which is attacking the former's profits and shifted more units in 2013. Trap Team is Activision's answer, and turns attention not only on this year's new characters but new technology in the portal that leverages titular Trap toys to capture villains in the game and then play as them.

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The new Portal not only looks different but incorporates a speaker to underline the trapping mechanics. As the villains are captured the sound travels from the screen to the portal. Place a plastic Trap token in the portal's slot and you can call up which ever villain you have previously trapped. There are more than 40 enemies to capture in total.

So far, so Skylanders. Novelties aside this all sounds like another standard iteration.

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However, playing the game first hand at E3 was an eye-opening experience. The new villain and Trap Master character designs look great on the PlayStation 4 demo (and in physical form) and, in multiplayer, the new quick-swap play scheme felt particularly fresh.

The ability to pair up not only two Skylander characters when playing with someone else, but a shared villain adds another dimension to co-operative play. Either player can switch to play as the villain at any time, but care must be taken not to deplete the villain's energy too quickly and to pair up abilities that complement the main characters.

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The villains are more powerful than the Skylanders, offering a range of useful attacks, so the game balances this by limiting their energy store which once depleted takes them out the game until they have recharged.

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Wired.co.uk saw this play out in the curiously titled "Sewers of Supreme Stink" E3 level and found that the different elements were more coherent than expected. There is a back and forth between the Skylanders and villains as players change to access particular attacks. But what starts as staccato switching soon develops a tactical flow not seen in previous titles.

As you play, different combinations spring to mind.

Whether it is freezing an enemy with a villain before switching back to a Trap Master to finish them off or placing a villain's healing glyph on the floor to aid an ailing Trap Master, there is plenty here to earn the "Team" moniker in the game's title. The Trap Masters themselves may lack the tactical mix and match mechanic of Swap Force, but they have the same attention to detail and look dramatic both on the portal and in-game.

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At the launch we had seen Snap Shot, Wallop and Widfire. At E3, the Trap Team characters available to play also included new ones: Krypt King, Jawbreaker and Gear Shift. It was good to see a variety of interesting designs for these characters as well as a better mix of genders this year (Swap Force had no females in its swappable hero roster).

Beyond these headlines there are also other reasons to look forward to Trap Team. Not least of which is the return of Skystones, the tactical tile laying game that my family still played long after finishing Giants.

Skystones Smash, as it is called this year, takes things in a more numerical direction but retains the simple tabletop play style. For a franchise famous for crossing virtual to real world toys it seems incredible that a physical Skystones board game hasn't been created.

Other nice touches are the ability to find hidden quests for the trapped villains that unlock special upgrades, along with gaming areas that only Trap Masters can unlock. I also like that you can collect enemy villains regardless of whether you have purchased the related Trap toy. They then wait for you in the hub world villain vault.

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This all comes at a price, of course, and many families will probably spend too much on the game by trying to collect all the characters. A better route to value is to stick to a starter pack with just the odd extra character now and again, although too much of this restraint probably nudges you into Scrooge territory.

Having shown that the various toy and video-game elements work coherently in Trap Team the challenge for Activision is to create an equally convincing commerce model for the new Trap toys. A little like the line of Power Discs for

Disney Infinity, these physically simple items are granted value purely by the characters they unlock.

Here lies the danger for a product designed to turn a profit. Sell them too hard, or create too many special editions with pre-loaded characters and they will start to feel expensive.

From what has been shown so far, the balance is looking about right.

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Skylanders Trap Team has the making of another strong outing for the franchise. It will be interesting to see how this compares with Disney Infinity when we learn more about that at E3 over the coming days.

Skylanders Trap Team will be released on Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and 3DS on 5 October in the US and 10 October in the UK.